Most people use several different online and offline tools to record, organize and share different aspects of the information that relates to their physical world (places, relationships/people, events, and life moments), including, without limitation, the following:
Personal information management tools (e.g., Microsoft Outlook™, Google Calendar™, calendar/contacts, etc.) for recording and managing their information about people, places, and calendared events.
Paper for recording and remembering their people, places, events and moments (e.g., post-it notes, articles from travel or restaurant review magazines, newspaper advertisements for sales at local businesses, diaries, etc.)
GPS and online and offline mapping services for figuring out where they are and how to get somewhere else (e.g., Google Maps™, MapQuest™, car-based GPS such as Garmin™ and Tomtom™ products.)
Online services such as digital venue, event, commercial deals databases and other websites and digital applications to discover a) new places to go, such as restaurants, businesses, vacation spots (e.g., Google Places/Hotspot™, Yelp™, Zagat™ Tripadvisor.com™, etc.), b) new events to experience (e.g., Moviefone™, Meetup™ community event databases, etc.) and c) new deals, coupons, specials at commercial venues to derive financial value (e.g., Foursquare™, Groupon™, Shopkick™, etc.)
Digital cameras, smartphones, mobile devices, camcorders, computers and other digital devices to record private notes, photos, videos, audio and other media about places, people, events and moments that they encounter or experience.
Email and social networks to share information about places, people, events and moments with their friends. These messages include data as to when the message was sent and often include information as to from where the message was originated (e.g., GPS information, street information, venue information.) These messages may include media such as pictures, video, audio recordings, music, and other digital media formats.
Sometimes people do not record such information because it is not currently easy to do so (e.g., meeting someone new who does not have a business card, walking by a restaurant and wanting to remember it for later, watching a travel show and wanting to remember a particular bed and breakfast, etc.)
People may be using a wide variety of tools to perform these life transactions but lack a universal, integrated solution to manage them that also allows them to combine their personal, private data and media with helpful information and content (e.g., reviews, store hours, history of a castle, etc.) For example, to set up a dinner event, a user may use their computer to research which restaurant to go to on a venue search tool. Then they may create an on-line calendar entry with the time and location that they email to their friends, who receive the entry using a smart phone. Then, everyone has to get directions to that place. The group may have a great wine at dinner that they want to remember for later (an example of a Moment), and after the event, they want to read what people may have tweeted about the event. To accomplish all this, they have to switch amongst different services and perhaps different devices.
Most systems that people are using today have database and transactions that are usually focused on only one or at most two of the following: the user's past, present or future. Social networking systems are good at communicating where people currently are and what they might be doing, but the data is not stored and organized in a manner that is easy to access for utility (e.g., recall, sharing, discovery, reliving) at a later point in time.
Systems such as Microsoft Outlook™, Blackberry™, Google Calendar™ and other Personal Information Management (PIM) Tools are good at providing a user a secure and private way to organize contacts, events and to-do's, but this private data cannot be easily linked to social transactions. Likewise most of the established PIM protocols have limited ability to geo-encode the data or link it to external data records. Location-based systems let people share where they are, but their data cannot be linked to personal events that are scheduled in the users' calendaring systems or other event systems. Social networks are useful for creating large group and public events but cannot manage personal or private events. So, today consumers use 1) Facebook™ and Twitter™ to share with others their current activities, 2) private Contact and Calendar Tools (iPhone™, Blackberry™, Outlook™) to manage their private data about people, places, to-do's, and events, 3) a variety of online and offline tools to capture their thoughts and life experiences and 4) third party Internet services or tangible products like Yelp™, TripAdvisor™, Moviefone™, or Frommer's™ tour books for finding informational content about places and events they may want to go or attend in the future.
Most of a consumer's information (events, places, people, and moments) is not recorded in a manner that can be data mined effectively. Large companies have the ability to track our web history, product use, and location in order to sell products and services to consumers. Currently, however, consumers do not have digital tools to mine their personal data where such mining which would offer them a multitude of benefits, including gaining insight into their own behavior.